Audacious plot to turn site of Hatton Garden heist into London’s latest tourist attraction

IT WAS the site of one of the most daring heists that Britain has ever seen.

Over the long Easter bank holiday weekend last year, a gang of career criminals drilled though a 50cm thick concrete wall to steal £17million from secure boxes held in a vault in Hatton Garden, in London’s jewellery quarter.

The details of the Hatton Garden burglary gripped the public, from the methods used by the gang to enter the building to the fact that several of the men eventually arrested by police were in their sixties and seventies.

Now, in what could be described as a similarly audacious move, there are plans to relocate the vault where the robbery took place to the Museum of London as a public exhibit. The plan would not only see the deposit boxes ransacked by the gang donated to the museum, but also the wall they drilled through to gain access and the heavy iron door that was supposed to keep the vault secure.

Once at the Museum of London, the vault would be recreated in all its detail, to appear as it did when the burglary was discovered by the staff who arrived for work on April 7.

The scheme is the brainchild of the Hatton Garden vault’s new owner, David Pearl, a millionaire property tycoon. He believes it could become one of London’s most popular attractions.

“People would be able to see what this amazing event was all about; the boxes, the security door and the wall the gang drilled through,” said Mr Pearl. “The robbery is an incredible part of London’s recent history and it would make a great visitor attraction. People would flock to it.”

The Museum of London said it was in early discussions with Mr Pearl about acquiring the vault. “It’s a great piece of contemporary history; a story that everybody was fascinated by and talking Clockwise from top left: John Collins, 74, Terry Perkins, 67, Brian Reader, 77, and Daniel Jones, 58, plotted to raid the vault,

after drilling through its wall, about,” said a spokesman for the museum, which charts the history of the city, including exhibitions from the Romans to the Great Fire and post-war multiculturalism.

Mr Pearl bought the lease to the vault for £200,000 in December last year, after its owners, the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company, went bust in the months following the heist.